To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(63)

“A simple no would have sufficed,” he said drolly and experimentally tested the soundness of the bridge of his nose. He winced. Yes, very possibly broken. By a slip of a lady. “I will say I’ve never quite received that—” His words trailed off. Eleanor’s chest heaved with the force of her rapidly drawn breaths. The pale white of her cheeks melded with the stark white of the plaster walls. By God, she was terrified. Granted, he was livid about the whole deuced painful nose business, but did she believe he’d harm her? Annoyance stirred in his belly. “Surely you don’t believe I’d hurt you.”

Her eyes stood out, vivid blue moons in her face; trapped within their depths was a gripping terror. She had the look of a woman battling tortured demons. A chill ran along his spine. Then, the fleeting moment passed. She blinked several times and then on a soft cry raced over. “My goodness, Marcus. I’ve hit you.”

“Yes,” he said with the first stirrings of amusement since that very violent rebuffing of his advances. Punched. Walloped him with a force Gentleman Jackson himself would have been hard-pressed to not admire. Marcus gave his head a wry shake.

“I am so sorry.” She moved her hands up, as though to affirm a break but then she swiftly lowered her palms to her sides. His gaze fixed on the tremble to her long, graceful fingers. He frowned as the faintest warnings stirred at the back of his mind. Why would Eleanor react so? Her response, paired with her humbling request for his aid melded together and he curled his hand into a balled fist. “It is all right,” he assured her. “It is not broken.”

“I—you surprised me.”

Mere surprise? Is that all there was to account for her panicked reaction? A niggling of unease settled in his belly and he blotted his nose once more. Marcus touched his free hand to her jaw. “I came to escort you for a ride in my curricle.”

She captured her lower lip between her teeth. “We can’t. Not with your nose—”

“It has nearly stopped bleeding,” he interrupted, pressing the crimson-stained fabric to his injury.

Eleanor hesitated; indecision raging in her eyes. Then she gave a slight nod. He extended one elbow and she placed her fingertips along his sleeve, allowing him to lead her from the room. As they walked, he examined the top of her bent head. Her skin, still a grayish-white from when she’d walloped him, and the trembling fingers on his forearm hinted at her terror. What was the cause of that sentiment? Upset over hurting him? Or something more…?

The knot in his belly grew and he forcibly thrust it back.

They reached the foyer and servants rushed forward with their cloaks.

Eleanor removed her fingers from his person and with those quaking digits, she fiddled with the clasp, and then she accepted her bonnet; a straw piece with faded roses sewn along the brim.

A memory trickled in. Eleanor as she’d been, wearing the same bonnet, only the colors had been crisp and those blooms so very full they had appeared real. This was the life she’d lived. This was the state her husband had left her in; a woman required to fulfill those charges doled out by a late uncle, all so she could know security for her and their child.

“What is…?” Eleanor’s words trailed off as she noted the direction of his scrutiny. She yanked the frayed ribbons into a neat bow. “Shall we?”

The butler rushed forward and pulled the door open. Sunlight streamed through the entrance and splashed off the white, Italian marble floor. Stuffing the stained handkerchief into his front pocket, Marcus motioned Eleanor outside and followed behind her.

No words were exchanged until he set the curricle into motion. “Have there been gentlemen who have forced their advances on you?” he asked without preamble. Because if there had been, he’d tear the bastards apart with his bare hands and feed them their own limbs for their evening meal.

From the corner of his eye, he caught the almost imperceptible tightening at the corners of her lips. She hesitated. “I am a widow.”

I am a widow. That was, at best, an unspoken affirmation of his question and, at worst, a deliberately vague response.

“A widow who does not wish to take a gentleman to her bed.” Unlike the countless widows he’d taken to his bed who’d relished the freedoms afforded them and more, the pleasure to be found in his arms. Pleasure he would show Eleanor, if she allowed it of him. Marcus shifted the reins to one hand and covered her fingers with his. The full, red flesh of her lips quivered under his ministrations, but she did not pull away and for that, he was encouraged. “You’d deny yourself the pleasures to be had in a man’s arms?” A fact for which he was grateful. The idea of her wrapped in another gentleman’s arms shattered him.

“How very arrogant you’ve become, Marcus. You are a rogue.” Yes, he’d fashioned himself into the indolent, charming rogue as a means of protecting himself from ever being hurt at the hands of a woman. He’d never been ashamed of who he’d become—until now, with the disappointment and sadness reflecting in the soulful depths of her eyes. “You expect I should take a gentleman to my bed because I am a widow? You’d have me sacrifice my self-respect and honor for what? A fleeting union of two people in a shameful act that should not exist beyond the bonds of marriage?”

A shameful act? “Is that how you view the act of making love, Eleanor?” Had her husband been one of those coolly detached sorts who snuffed the candle and came to her with coverlets drawn and her nightshift between them? What a bloody fool.